By David Stout, The New York Times
Washington, June 1 -- The government sought today to portray Jose Padilla, the American citizen who has been detained as a suspected terrorist for two years, as even more dangerous than previously described, asserting that he wanted to blow up apartment buildings and hotels in the United States.
In what amounted to a plea for public understanding, Deputy Attorney General James Comey said at a news briefing that Padilla had terrorist ambitions even beyond his desire to carry out an attack with a radioactive “dirty bomb,” an accusation the authorities first made in 2002 after Padilla was arrested at a Chicago airport.
Comey said the full facts of Padilla’s plotting “will allow the American people to understand the threat he posed and also understand that the president’s decision was and continues to be essential to the protection of the American people.”
Comey was referring to the decision by President Bush and the Justice Department to label Padilla an “enemy combatant” and hold him indefinitely, largely without access to counsel, even though no charges have been lodged against him.
Padilla’s lawyers objected again today to the treatment accorded their client, asserting that the government’s conduct has prevented him from giving his side.
“Our government is not based on a system in which, because the president believes somebody is dangerous, that they simply throw somebody in a black hole and keep them in prison forever,” one lawyer, Donna Newman, said in New York City.
The case of Padilla and the similar detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi, another American citizen who was seized in Afghanistan where he was accused of fighting on behalf of the Taliban, have stirred a far-reaching debate over what rights, and whose rights, should be curtailed in the cause of national security.
The Supreme Court heard arguments on the cases in April and will rule before recessing for the summer. The cases are widely acknowledged to be among the most important to come before the tribunal in decades.
Comey said the information released today about Padilla, which included documents based in part on interviews with him, showed that he and an Al Qaeda accomplice hoped to blow up high-rise apartment buildings.
“They would rent two apartments in each building, seal all the openings, turn on the gas, and set timers to detonate the buildings simultaneously at a later time,” legal papers contended, according to The Associated Press.
The information released today was compiled in response to inquiries from Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey said. He said federal agencies had been working long before getting Hatch’s request in late April to gather and declassify information about Padilla.
Comey said that if Padilla had been handled by the usual standards of the criminal justice system - allowed access to counsel and been able to refuse to answer questions, for instance - he could have stayed silent and “would likely have ended up a free man.”
“Much of this information has been uncovered because Jose Padilla has been detained as an enemy combatant and questioned,” Comey said. “We have learned many things from Padilla that I’m not going to discuss today and that we did not include in our answer to Senator Hatch.”
The deputy attorney general said the timing of the new accusations against Padilla had nothing to do with trying to influence the Supreme Court. In any event, the justices, having heard arguments on April 28, may well be on their way to deciding, collectively or otherwise.
Comey’s briefing may have been meant more for the court of public opinion. “We have decided to release this information to help people understand why we are doing what we are doing in the war on terror and to help people understand the nature of the threat we face,” he said.
Comey said he had not ruled out the possibility that Padilla might face criminal charges one day, but that prosecuting him was secondary to finding out what he knows.
Had Padilla been charged initially, “he would very likely have followed his lawyer’s advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right,” Comey said. “He would likely have ended up a free man, with our only hope being to try to follow him 24 hours a day, seven days a week and hope - pray, really - that we didn’t lose him.”